Google has started to make available the entire back archive of Life Magazine, including images dating back to 1750, apparently. It includes things like the Zapruder film, the moon landings and the entire works of some of the Life photographers.

Especially relevant to Word readers is that Life obviously has quite a lot of interesting pop culture folk in its archives.

Just as an experiment, I put in 'Bob Dylan' and the first hit is a rather nice photo of his Bobness on stage in 1971 here

It's clearly US-biased (naturally) and in so far as I've tested it, doesn't contain that much off the beaten path. Tom Waits has no images, for instance, but there's still much to amuse and fascinate.

You can also purchase prints of anything that takes your fancy, if that's yer thing.

I could get lost in there!

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Bit of a left-field choice, chaps - wouldn't have guessed it.

At a distance, I thought it was a mid-70s Billy Connolly!

My wife has given birth to a beautiful baby girl on Sunday evening, which is obviously wonderful for us, if sleep-sapping. With a two-year old already, there goes most of my free time for the next few months! Ah well; that's what you get if you have kids.

That's just my jumping off point. I have a serious poser for the Word Massive. Are there any songs about babies that aren't vomit-inducingly gushing or, alternatively, unpleasant, but are just genuinely good songs about a new arrival?

I'm rather of the inclination that there possibly aren't. Anyone care to argue?

Some chap's redone the vocals to a-ha's Take On Me so that the lyrics match what's happening in the video and it's fantastic.

Get yourselves over to:

http://daytrotter.com/article/1447/aimee-mann

for four live tracks originally featured on the latest opus "@#%&*! Smilers". Bless ya, Ms Mann!

There's some other good stuff in their archives too!

Does anyone remember the salient details from a Word Podcast - can't tell you which - regarding an album that was remastered, and because the work of the remastering engineer counted as new work, it effectively extended the copyright even though the mechanical copyright had run out?

I may have that slightly wrong, but that's about the gist as I remember it.

Inspired by a comment made in the earlier thread about classic albums that sound terrible, what do people think of books that come with the literary equivalent of 'DVD Extras'?

I can think of a few:

George Monbiot's The Age of Consent had about several pages of interviews and other short pieces.
Robert Rankin has included playlists of the music he listened to while writing the books.
Neil Gaiman's books frequently contain interviews with the author, deleted scenes and, rather presumptuously, questions that teachers might ask their class to consider.

I can understand the nakedly transparent practice of giving readers a sample of the next novel, but I remain on the fence when it comes to other supplementary material.

With the collapse of Lehman Brothers prompting the Times to run a piece on those poor stockbrokers being forced to leave their desks with their gold-plated office accoutrements hastily stuffed in a cardboard box (a Harrods box, admittedly), and the press in general declaring that we're in the worst crisis since the 1930s, I had a look for some examples of the music of the original Great Depression. Here's what I found.

Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground) by Blind Willie Johnson
Mean Low Blues, by Blues Birdhead
Happy Days Are Here Again, by Casa Loma Orchestra
We Sure Got Hard Times Now, by Barbecue Bob
Headin' For Better Times, by Ted Lewis and His Band
All of Me, by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra
It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing), by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra
There's A New Day Comin', by Ted Lewis and His Band
NRA Blues, by Bill Cox
Are You Makin' Any Money?, by Chick Bullock and His Levee Loungers
He's In The Ring (Doin' The Same Old Thing), by Memphis Minnie
Detroit Moan, by Victoria Spivey and the Chicago Four
Whistle While You Work, by Artie Shaw and His New Music
Strange Fruit, by Billie Holiday
Gloomy Sunday, by Billie Holiday

So, if there's any chance of history repeating itself, who of our current popular music acts do we think might be the stars of the next Great Depression?

Will Pete Doherty write the next Gloomy Sunday?

Will Kate Nash become the next Woody Guthrie?

Can Richard Thompson really be the new Bessie Smith?

What do we have to look forward too? Oh, and while we’re at it, brother, can you spare a dime?

Elbow.

Not especially left field, not controversial or even particularly unexpected but bloody well deserved, if you ask me.

Following on from the earlier question about what to do with back issues, would it be possible to release - possibly after an appropriate delay - back issues of a magazine like Word in some sort of electronic format?

There'd be three possible options:

1) Downloadable PDF
2) Website
3) Interactive CD

I'd be happy to pay for electronic back issues.

I presume there are probably some issues with doing this of which I'm entirely ignorant..?

OK, I've got 4 tracks remaining out of this month's e-Music sub... Spend 'em for me; give me your pick of the pops!

For a few years around the turn of the millennium, some friends and I ran a stand up comedy club called 'Jinx'. We used to produce a small magazine to go with each show, and one of our standard items was parodies of popular culture.

They're all quite old now, but hopefully they'll raise a smile. Or a groan.

After hearing the Marillion song 'Out of this World' about Donald Campbell's ill-fated attempt on the water speed record, underwater surveyor Bill Smith was inspired to discover the wreck of the Bluebird and to retreive the body of Campbell from Coniston Water.

Recently, the first pictures of the restored Bluebird have been released: http://snipurl.com/3cbvj

Any other interesting examples of where songs by popular beat combos have inspired events in the real world?

Charity singles are excluded!

Adele - '19'
British Sea Power - 'Do You Like Rock Music?'
Burial - 'Untrue'
Elbow - 'The Seldom Seen Kid'
Estelle - 'Shine'
The Last Shadow Puppets - 'The Age Of The Understatement'
Laura Marling - 'Alas I Cannot Swim'
Neon Neon - 'Stainless Style'
Portico Quartet - 'Knee-Deep In The North Sea'
Robert Plant And Alison Krauss – 'Raising Sand'
Radiohead - 'In Rainbows'
Rachel Unthank And The Winterset – 'The Bairns'

A Record Collection?
A CD Collection?
A Download Collection?
A Music Collection?
A.N. Other?

An indication of your age might also be illuminating.

I realised that on another post I'd referred to my 'Record Collection' and what a ridiculous anachronism that actually is, not least because I dumped 80% of my vinyl when I moved house back in December, having replaced the bits I still wanted to listen to with CDs or downloads. I'm 37 and began buying records in earnest in about 85.